1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a target point arrival detector, a target point arrival detection program and a vehicle-mounted device control system that detects a vehicle arrives at a given target point based on a plurality of images, captured by a plurality of image capturing unit, ahead of a vehicle such as automobile and robot that moves on surfaces.
2. Background Art
Conventional road surface recognition apparatuses identify three-dimensional shape of a road surface over which a vehicle moves (such as convexities/concavities in the road surface ahead of the vehicle). The vehicle mounts image capturing units to capture an image ahead of the vehicle. Based on a luminance image and a distance image (parallax image data) obtained from the image captured by the image capturing units, three-dimensional shapes of lane markers on a road surface is computed, and the three-dimensional shape of the road surface is identified from the three-dimensional shapes of the lane markers.
As the vehicle approaches the top of a hill, the vehicle arrives at a point where the road surface inclination changes and that uphill road surface becomes a flat road surface or a downhill road surface, which is the point where the driver of the vehicle cannot see beyond the top of the hill. A similar situation exists as the vehicle arrives at a point where the road surface inclination changes from a flat road surface to a downhill road surface.
Therefore, when the road surface inclination of the road ahead of the vehicle changes to downward with respect to the road surface where the vehicle is moving (road surface right below the vehicle), the driver of the vehicle has a poor vision for the ahead of the vehicle.
Therefore, because the driver of the vehicle has a poor vision at a point where the road surface inclination changes to a surface slope inflection point, the driver's recognition of obstacles existing ahead of the vehicle such as other vehicles and pedestrians existing in the ahead of the vehicle is delayed, and the driver's recognition of road condition changing ahead of the vehicle such as sharp curve is delayed, and such delay may cause accidents.